A young family's search for a simple life

My little brother got married this past weekend, and I spent a good long time trying to think of some good advice to give him. Having been married for five years myself, I knew he’d be looking to me as something of an expert, but to be honest, most days I feel like I still have a lot to learn. Add to that the fact that I’m a writer by trade and an actor at heart, and I was looking at a lot of pressure to get this advice and delivery bit right.
My now sister-in-law(!) asked me to write my brother a letter to be read the morning of the ceremony, a letter speaking to our life together and my wishes for the next phase of his. I spent weeks wracking my brain for good advice and putting it off. As I was driving to the hotel the morning before, I knew I finally had to come up with something. And quickly.
So I stopped overthinking. I looked out the window at the sublime beauty of central Minnesota— the gilded horizon, the bluest of blue skies dotted with billowy white clouds—and I took a deep breath. I looked down at my son sleeping in his car seat next to me—a tangible reminder of pure and unconditional love—and I took a deep breath. I looked up at my loving husband, the only person with whom I have ever imagined sharing this life—patience, understanding, and good humor personified—and I took a deep breath. And just like that, I knew what to say.

Here is my best advice for a beautiful life, married or otherwise: breathe.

Breathe to slow down the days you want to remember. Breathe in moments when you need to hold your tongue. Breathe to center yourself or to remind yourself of little blessings. Whenever you need it: breathe.
Sometimes life can be messy and complicated. Sometimes it requires careful planning, clever problem-solving, or something in between. Often it’s simple, and all it takes is a clear mind and a deep breath. So breathe.

Money terrifies me. It really does. I don’t like it, and I don’t understand it, and I fear what I don’t know. (Seriously, when I work on budgeting, I often ask my husband to hold my hand.)

But I also know I need to face that fear and take control of my finances in order to live the life I want. So I’m working on it. And it’s a painfully slow process, but I’m trying.

I took a webinar yesterday on personal finance, and afterward, was feeling great about where we’re at. I felt so good, in fact, I decided to go through our spending report (which I do monthly) to identify small money leaks before they become floods (Day 9 of No Sidebar’s 30 Days to a Simpler Life course, which I highly recommend).

Now, I knew we had gone a little overboard this month with some anticipated extra spending and minor emergencies, things like work on our basement, ER bills from our two-month sick spell, a family wedding, etc. Would you like to guess how much we went over our monthly budget?

In the last 30 days we have spent $2,000 outside of our regular budget. You read that correctly: $2,000! We’re not rich people by any stretch of the imagination, and that for us is a lot of money.

I should clarify: most of that spending fell in the “anticipated extras and minor emergencies” category, but there was a fair amount of trivial stuff, too. Coffee-shop stops and a Target run. That’s where my money went last month—instead of building our wealth, saving for our family’s future, we bought coffee and crap we didn’t need. I’m so disappointed in myself.

But everyone slips from time to time, which is why we have an emergency fund. Fortunately, we’re going to be just fine, but this seems like a good time to remind ourselves of some personal finance rules we all know but rarely follow:

1. Pay cash.

I’m 99.9% sure this never would have happened if I had paid for these purchases with cash. Because the sacrifice of the transactions register differently in our minds, we spend, on average, 12–15% more when we use credit cards than we do with cash, so making the switch should be a no brainer.

We’ve also been practicing the skill since childhood. The lucky ones among us were given a cash allowance, which we’d spend until it ran out, and then we’d be done until we earned more. After years of practice, we should be pros.

But finances get complicated as we get older: we’re encouraged to open credit lines to boost our credit scores, and we take on debts that aren’t always easy to pay with cash, things like student, car, and home loans. My hope, though, is that using cash is like riding a bike: easy to pick up after a while, if inconvenient.

2. Make a budget or spending plan.

If you can’t control your spending today, it will control you tomorrow. It’s as simple as that. Make a budget or a plan for how you want to use your hard-earned cash. Allocate it while you can.

Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist has a really interesting suggestion for monthly money management: a spending plan as opposed to a budget. Because, let’s face it, life isn’t the same from month to month. I’m really intrigued by this idea. Has anyone tried it?

3. Pay yourself first.

I’ve never successfully done this, but paying yourself first—setting aside money for savings before it gets eaten up by discretionary spending—is a great way to build wealth while reigning in a tendency toward unnecessary spending. If you don’t have it, you can’t spend it, but wait: you do have it. It’s just already been used for something more. And if an emergency arises, you’re covered!

4. Stop digging.

This is obvious, and we all know it, but if you’re in debt, or you want to increase your savings/decrease your spending, stop overspending! We all have our hangups; ours is emotional spending and a penchant for convenience, but now is the time to resist. Like any habit, it simply takes practice. Our society will tell you, and the commercial interests of the big-banking industry will tell you, that you can have whatever you want when you want it. But if you’re like me, you likely can’t, or shouldn’t.

I never want to be in the same position I was yesterday, so starting today, we’re following these rules. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

There was good news yesterday: I was fortunate enough to have a piece published on No Sidebar, “4 Ways Having a Baby Made Me a Better Minimalist.” I have so much respect for the community being built there, and I’m honored to be a part of it.

What personal finance tips and tricks, simple or complex, help you stay on track with your financial goals?

I am sick and tired—literally—from too much stuff. Seriously. Between a busy stretch at work, the beginning of the school year, and our little one starting daycare, we’ve just had too much to do, and we tried really hard to get it all done. Then we all ended up sick.
Which got us behind. So we worked harder, which wore us out. Which got us further behind. And the cycle continued. For two months!

We’re just coming out of it now, and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s clear some things need to change.

There will, if the universe is willing, be more regular content coming your way shortly. Stay tuned, and thank you for your patience!
In the meantime, how do you reset when your stuff and schedules get the best of you?

I’m also pretty good at bringing in new things to fill the empty space.

Until recently I’ve approached minimalism with a feast-or-famine mentality: I’ve done really well at resisting “stuff” for a while, but then I’ve felt the need to reward myself for resisting said stuff, so I’ve treated myself to more stuff. And then I’ve felt guilty for bringing in more things, so I’ve purged, and replaced, and purged, and replaced. It’s an expensive, exhausting, and unnecessary cycle. But it’s just felt like the thing to do.

And in order to make room for these things that matter so much to me, I have to learn to (and want to) let go of the things that don’t:

Debt
Worry
Possessions
Perfection

I’ve got a long way to go in the next four years. I’ve got a mind, home, and schedule to clear. I’ve got more concrete priorities to set. But the good news is I can let go. Now I just need to learn to keep that space free.

I’m always looking for ways to spend more time with my son. As a full-time working parent, I always feel like there just isn’t enough of it. So I volunteer to be the sole weekend naptime rocker, or I offer to be the late-night diaper changer. Now I’ve found an even simpler way to squeeze in a few extra seconds every day.

Whenever I’m doing something with my son, whether it’s reading, rocking, or playing, and I feel the urge to move on to the next activity (or, let’s be honest, to check my phone), I give us both an extra minute: no matter what, I stop what I’m doing, take a long look at my beautiful boy, and count to 60. If my mind wanders, I gently ask it to return. If he squirms or fusses, I respond with love. Otherwise, we’re there for the next 60 seconds. Barring an emergency, there are no exceptions.

A minute may not feel like much, and it’s not, which is the best part of this strategy: it’s pretty easy to give up one minute. There are few, if any, things in life that can’t wait that long. And sometimes that minute extends to 2 or 3, but what really gets me is imagining what those minutes will amount to—if I added my minute at playtime, then 2 from his bath, and 3 during bedtime, how much extra time would that be?

In a week?

In a month?

In 1 year?

In 18?

How about you: how do you find time for a few extra minutes with your loved ones?

I’d been feeling a lot of guilt lately: about the way I look, the way I eat, the way I get distracted by work at home and home at work. I’d also been feeling guilty about the state of my house.

We had such grand plans when we moved in just over a year ago, but then life happened: I got pregnant, we had a baby, and we put every penny that could have gone toward renovating into savings for said baby.

Needless to say, we haven’t done much to the house yet.

And I know we’ll be here forever. And I know it takes time for houses to evolve into homes; that there’s no rush. But then I look at the homes of DIY and lifestyle bloggers through the much-edited lens of social media, and I am ashamed by my negligence.

In January I signed up for a weekly photo class, and I finally got around to my first assignment this summer. As I went around from room to room looking for nice compositions, I was struck by all of the beauty around me, all of the lovely details in my home, in its quirks, and in its piles.

In my little, average house I have so much to appreciate, so much for which to be thankful.

There is beauty all around me already. As much as I’d maybe like to, I don’t need to “shop [y]our house.” Mine might not be much, but it’s more than enough for me.

Yesterday I came across “The Power of One Focused Hour a Day,” and the timing couldn’t have been better. I was just getting the courage and momentum to start this blog, but was feeling like there was no way I could fit it into my day, what with a full-time job and a new(ish) baby at home. (He’s five months old. How much longer do I get to call him “a new baby”? Do I still get to use that excuse?) Enter Srinivas Rao’s idea of one focused hour a day, which “can produce amazing results.” According to Rao,

With one focused hour a day you can easily develop a daily writing habit, and even write something daily as Seth Godin does.

With one focused hour a day you can make time to read the books you’ve been wanting to read.

With one focused hour you can find flow and build momentum for your creative endeavor

With one focused hour a day you can learn a new language

Now, I may not have a lot of free time, but I have more than I think, and I definitely have one hour each day. So I tried it.

I woke up at 5 a.m., started the coffee, and wrote. I sat down in quiet darkness with nothing to distract me but the sound of crickets outside my window. No baby. No phone. And I wrote. I watched the sun come up, and I wrote some more. It was beautiful.

In the past I’ve been pretty good at coming up with ways to get out of things that scare me, things that ask me to be vulnerable, uncomfortable, or especially diligent. Those excuses usually take the form of “I just don’t have the time.” Maybe now that I’ve tried the focused hour, they’ll be fewer and far between.